Spain Business Brief - Thursday December 3 2009

Spain Business Brief - Thursday December 3 2009
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By h.b. - Dec 3, 2009 - 1:45 PM

Gatwick Airport - EFE archive

Ferrovial completes the sale of Gatwick Airport

Spanish company Ferrovial has completed the sale of Gatwick Airport in London for 1.67 billion €. An investment fund from General Electric and Credit Suisse are the new owners of the airport which has been for sale for the past year on the insistence of the British competition authorities. The Ferrovial sale was via its British subsidiary BAA, the British Airports Authority. The company will use the money to pay off some of its debts, as it has been doing earlier this week with the launch of new company bonds. Ferrovial still own Heathrow and Stansted airports in London.

The Employers’ Organisation, CEOE, has called on the Spanish Prime Minister not to put ‘a red line’ against labour reform. Speaking in Congress yesterday, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, spoke of labour reform without any reduction in the costs of redundancies, but today the President of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations, CEOE, Gerardo Díaz Ferrán, repeated his call for no pre-conditions on labour reform. He said he was willing to talk on labour reform with the unique objective of searching for full employment.

Minister for Tax and the Economy, Elena Salgado, has been speaking of gradually putting back the retirement age. Responding to a recommendation from the EU to Spain to take action in the provision of pensions, the Minister said that such a reform would be carried out in a period of 20 or 25 years. She said that the Spanish pensions system remained very healthy.
Her comments are somewhat different to those of the Minister for Employment last April, when Celestino Corbacho said he was radically against the idea of delaying the retirement age.

There are reports however that the Government will take early action on bringing forward the retirement age of the disabled. A change in the law is expected to be approved by the cabinet tomorrow, Friday.

It comes as ECOFIN will take control over the supervision of Banks, Stock Markets and Insurance across the continent. Three new ECOFIN authorities will arbitrate over the national regulators when there is a cross border operation. The change in regulation was opposed by Britain.

During his speech to Congress yesterday the Spanish Prime Minister opened the door to a new pact on energy policy. He indicated that he could be prepared to see a change in nuclear policy, but also said that there was no interest in promoting new nuclear plants in Spain. PP leader Mariano Rajoy described it as ‘an empty proposal’. Ecologist groups have meanwhile asked the cabinet for ‘clear ideas’ on the matter.

Consumer confidence rose in November after two months of falls, with the ICO index reflecting a slower pace to the recession in the economy. The index complied by the Official Credit Institute rose by 6.1 points over the month to stand at 75.3. Of the six questions asked in their survey, it was the one of their expectations for the Spanish economy which rose the most, 11.5 points over the month, while their own position at home rose by only 0.3 points.

Socialist Ex Minister for the Economy, Miguel Boyer, has forecast that Spain will move out of recession this quarter. He has also added his voice to the calls for labour reform in 2010. Speaking on Radio Nacional he also noted that Spain had entered into recession after some other industrialised countries.

Spanish bank BBVA has announced more investment in China, and has increased its participation in the China Citi Bank to 15%. The bank has spent 1 billion € on increasing its shareholding with the purchase of the 4.93% of the bank’s capital. BBVA first purchased shares in the Chinese bank in November 2006.

The Minister for Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, today called a group of representatives from the Internet to explain her plans to close down P2P file sharing pages without the need for a judicial order. The Spanish internet has been awash with protest since the announcement, with users saying it smacks of censorship.

The Government is expected to expropriate the old frequencies used by mobile phone operators in an effort to force them to speed up the implementation of mobile broadband services. The Government wants to ensure that there are enough frequencies available and want to reach an agreement where the 900 MHz band will be freed of use by second generation mobile GSM phones.

The principal of an agreement has been reached for the closure of the Lear factory in Roquetas de Mar, Almería, in April next year. 520 jobs will go, and workers are being asked to vote on the redundancy package today. They will be paid 50 days pay for each year worked. It will cost the company 27 million € as a top limit of 150,000 € per worker is established.

Telefónica has completed the purchase of the German company Hansenet for 900 million €. It makes the Spanish company the third operator in Germany as it takes over the company from Telecom Italia.

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